It's been quite a while since I last posted, forgive me for my absence. I've been focused on my higher education work which has been tremendously rewarding both intellectually and on a level of personal satisfaction in seeing the seeds of some grand ideas manifest. While I have been devoting a lot of energy to this work, I have not let my creative muscles atrophy and have all the while been plotting and planning for a new series of alternative process work.

So, what I am doing is alternative process images (tintype / ferrotype and ambrotype) mounted ornately in a similar way to the
mementos popular in the Victorian era. Several will be diptych and
triptychs for the narrative aspect...most sizes will be somewhere in
line with the old pocket tintype cases, so they are small and
intimate.

The first step is to gather the parent images and then create the illustrations in Photoshop. Here is the process on one piece...tentatively titled "Sea Queen" but will most likely change since at this point in my process the narrative is constantly unfolding.

4 Parent Images (Galaxy courtesy of NASA)

Rough Photoshop edit of 12 layers (condensed to 6 here)

Background is added thanks to NASA and digital "painting" begins

Final illustration will be output in color and....

At this point I will move this to grayscale and create a digital positive and print on a nice transparency film. From here I will go into the darkroom and hand coat glass or metal and create a print. Stay tuned for the next step....